They say you shouldn’t bite the hand feeds you, but that isn’t stopping MSNBC’s “The Last Word” host Lawrence O’Donnell.

In a brazen display of political loyalty trumping company loyalty, O’Donnell took to airwaves on his Thursday night program to suggest NBC “Celebrity Apprentice” host and potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is on his birther crusade in order to bolster his show’s ratings.

O’Donnell explained to his guest, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, that since Trump has been making the media rounds discussing the birth certificate of President Barack Obama, there has been a jump in his NBC show’s ratings.

“Jonathan, I want you to take a look at the ratings chart for Donald Trump’s NBC show ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’” O’Donnell said. “It starts off below the 8 million-mark. It also starts off very low in the demo, in the audience 18 to 49, to 2.8. As it gets crazier, it goes straight up. He’s now above a 3 in the demo which is the number NBC cares about the most. He’s at a 3.1. He was at a 3.0 the week before. It used to be on NBC on prime time you could get a show canceled off of NBC prime time if you fell below the 3.0. I know it happened to me. But know that NBC is not the number one network, it desperately needs numbers like this. I have said all along this fake campaign is about these numbers. It’s the only way Trump could get attention to his show this time around. This was the way to pump up those numbers and his paycheck from NBC.”

Capehart attempted spell out and debunk each point Trump has been making about Obama’s birth certificate, which he did in a Wednesday afternoon post on WashingtonPost.com for viewers. However, O’Donnell from his perch at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City asked Capehart what it would take for Trump to be fired at a time when the likes of Glenn Beck and Charlie Sheen have had their departures announced from their respective employers.

“I think we’re at the point now where Glenn Beck wears out his welcome at Fox News with Roger Ailes for going crazy in these kinds of things,” O’Donnell said. “Charlie Sheen gets kicked off of CBS for saying for saying crazy things. How crazy do you have to be, how many lies do you have to tell about the president of the United States, how much hate do you have to promote that Donald Trump has promoted to get yourself kicked off of prime time NBC?”

Capehart didn’t have an answer, but suggested O’Donnell was in a better place to make that assessment as an employee at NBC.